I want to go back to bed and sleep for a thousand years. Where once I naively assumed that we just needed to survive the initial blast of the 2024 election, I now realize there are shockwaves which will be felt for years, if not generations. So what do we do when we feel helpless, trapped, and on the brink of tuning out forever? Tiny acts of rebellion.

Waking up and telling Michael that Trump won the election was like finding out Dad was locked in the nursing home with COVID all over again. I felt, and continue to feel, small, helpless, horrified. The top of my To Do list reads:

1. Confirm Michael’s prescription refills and continue researching international healthcare policies.

2. Re-submit Michael’s paperwork to NYC for birth certificate change.

3. Help Parker’s partner get a passport.

4. Cancel Thanksgiving.

This morning I received an email from my kid’s school. Inside was information about the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation which awards $20,000 to 150 U.S. high school students. I forwarded the website to my kid and told him to apply. Then I read through the bios of last year’s scholarship winners.

Remaking my idea of ‘home’ feels like building sandcastles at the sea’s edge. Yet, despite all the shedding, reimagining and redefining I do, there are pieces that stay.

Get yourself to a Rock and Roll show. Go sober. Throw your arms up and your head back and let the bass clean out your chest cavity. Dance with the strangers around you. Sing and scream. Last night we took a group energy shower together. Today I feel clean. And I have 38,000 new brothers and sisters.

Unlike the finger-caught-in-the-door surprise that’s waiting for us all the time and is never to be outrun, life also offers bits of healing through beauty, nature, friendship, Spirit. But this you’ve gotta work for. No one accidentally trips into a walk in the woods.

Walking the carved stone and gravel paths through whispering pines and past famous trolls, I remembered what The Universe was showing me. Magic. I’d lost my connection to the magic.

So here’s me, standing in the crisp air of a Maine fall morning, poking about the sweetest farmer’s market known to man, proud to be standing upright, when a man turned to me. “Hey! It’s you!” he said, smile expanding. “Wow! I’m so glad to see you!” I had never seen this man before in my life.

Let’s put some things on the table right now.

Yes, I spent almost three weeks in Europe.

Yes, this was very unlike me to blaze ahead in the midst of family chaos (aka The Move) and just make selfish choices.

And yes, this trip might very well have saved me.

I’m typing this on the first desktop computer I’ve owned since the 90’s, on a desk stocked with Uni Ball pens and my glitter collection, in my very own office with my very own door. I’ve been dreaming of this moment for months.

For the second time in two weeks, I have accidentally super glued my fingers. The first was in trying to glue the handle back onto my rice cooker after the cord wrapped around my leg, dragging it off of the counter, causing it to smash on the floor.

I’m one of those people who finds a loose thread on my favorite shirt, the kind that dangles so seductively and yet threatens to destroy the item that I love, and I pull it. Maybe not all the way but definitely until the garment is irreparably damaged. This is exactly what I did with my own mental health the weekend they reversed Roe vs. Wade.

Yesterday my kid got in the car, and before we were even a mile away from school, he was sobbing in the passenger seat.